timelines and discrete units

Monday, October 18th, 2004

An interesting day in new media. We’ve moved into considerations of timelines as an underlying theme and model. Discrete elements added to the timeline make for interesting editing. It’s an odd thing to consider. Since the elements, such as a shaded ball, are discrete and permanant yet maleable, where they fall into the timetime brings us back to that other underlying principle, narrative.

Mr. Keating had brought up the example of IF in our discussions and that forms relationship to the concept, but I think here we’re back to narrative paths and the notion of options as conceptual keyframes.

startroom: room
sdesc = “Apple Apex”
ldesc = “It’s windy at the top of apples. You can feel the core beneath your feet.
The apple surface slopes off into empty space. All directions, mainly the cardinal points,
appear as sheers in space. “
east = apple
north = greenapple
west = whiteapple
south = redapple

Every “verb” or imperative is a possible fork in the unwinding path of the story (sounds like Borges). In that way, various options in the story can be viewed as “triggers.”

Related

One response to “timelines and discrete units”

This reminds me of conversations, and the way one thought expressed verbally inevitably “triggers” another in the listener that leads to another trail or narrative. This is sort of where I was heading in my own postings the other day about the brain being the working model behind new media ideas. The paths are there, the clues are there, the options are open, and the layers appear upon cue.